OYE! Loans receives $2.25 million in funding from GAIN Credit

OYE Fintech, which operates a consumer-focused lending platform called OYE! Loans, (www.oyeloans.com) has raised $2.25 million (about ₹15 crore) from GAIN Credit, Inc. OYE! Loans currently serves new-to-credit and new-to-workforce consumers with simple, timely and affordable One Year EMI loans (hence the brand OYE!), with ticket-sizes ranging between 10K and 1L INR.

The company leverages alternative data to assess risk on customers who have thin or non-existent footprints on the credit bureau. The loan application to disbursal process is largely online, enabling for quick turn-around times of less than 2 business days – an attribute that has strengthened its growing reputation as a lender-of-choice within its target markets.

With the support of Northern Arc Capital (formerly known as IFMR Capital), its lending partner, OYE Fintech will leverage the new funds to strengthen its underwriting models aimed at new-to-credit consumers, scale-up operations, and enhance its footprint to cover multiple cities (currently OYE! Loans is only operating in Chennai). In the process, the company will stay focused on leveraging the digital ecosystem to evolve towards a completely paperless process with virtually no human intervention – a business model that its parent company GAIN Credit has perfected from years of operation in the UK.

“This funding marks a reiteration of GAIN Credit’s long-term vision of becoming a global fintech leader, driven by the mission of empowering the lives of the underserved and underbanked by providing responsible access to credit. In addition to the capital provided, OYE! is built on the back of our strong digital lending technology and talent footprint in India”, said Mukund Venkatesh, Managing Director India - Global Analytics India (a subsidiary of GAIN Credit, Inc.).

Congratulating OYE! on the development, Kshama Fernandez, CEO - Northern Arc Capital (formerly IFMR Capital), said, “As OYE!’s principal debt partner, we are pleased with the strong growth and expansion plans of the company. We look forward to continuing our support to the company in its journey, as it resonates with our aim of empowering financially-excluded households and sectors with access to credit solutions”.

Echoing the positive sentiment, Pradeep Rathnam, President - OYE Fintech, observed, “GAIN Credit’s investment in OYE! enables us to accelerate our plans to build scalable India-specific credit products with a focus on robust alternate credit scoring and fraud detection machine-learning models. As a result, we will be much better placed in identifying the right customers, setting the optimum loan amounts, and delivering compelling value propositions in a seamless, frictionless manner.

Buoyed by the Indian government’s laser-focus on digital transformation and measures aimed at fostering a cashless economy, the country’s fintech sector is forecasted to be worth $2.4 Bn by 2020 (KPMG report in 2016) presenting a significant opportunity for startups like us which are singularly focused on providing responsible credit solutions to those lacking access to mainstream financial services.”

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